‘Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing’ was still playing, with lots of dirty bass, and I tried to say something but couldn’t get my tongue to form the words. I wished I hadn’t argued with Sean, and I wondered what Nick was doing in my lounge room, but never found out. Just as he opened his mouth to talk a loudspeaker boomed from somewhere outside.
‘Police! Nick Austin, drop your weapon.’
The red dot of a laser sight wobbled around on his chest and I heard big boots, lots of them, running up the stairwell. Seconds later the front door burst open and Nick spun around, gun held up in front of him. I heard a loud pop, and a fine spray of red misted the air and then he was falling, right on top of me, crushing my chest and forcing the air from my lungs. I smelled sweat and blood and felt hot wetness soak the thin fabric of my top. He rolled over, elbow digging into my ribs, and pulled my face close to his, fingernails digging into my scalp. I tried to scream, but he’d winded me and nothing came out. He turned his head and his breath was hot in my ear.
‘Warn Nerida,’ he croaked. ‘Warn J—’
Then the weight lifted off me, and a guy who looked like a soldier in a science fiction film shouted something unintelligible, kicked me onto my front and almost pulled my arms out of their sockets as he handcuffed my wrists.
•
‘I put it to you that you remained in contact with Nick Austin while he was a fugitive.’
‘No. I didn’t.’ I was sitting in a fluorescent-lit interview room somewhere in the rabbit warren of St Kilda Road Police Complex. Grey carpet, grey melamine table, chipped walls, and a video camera staring at me from a unit attached to the ceiling. It had to be midnight, and the hangover had long ago set in. I was dehydrated, it felt like a metal bolt was penetrating my skull just above my right eye, and my wrists and shoulders ached from the rough stuff and the handcuffs.
‘Would you like to comment as to why Austin showed up at your residence?’
‘I don’t know. I told you, I told those other guys, he came in with a gun and the only words he said were after he was shot. Warn Nerida, warn J somebody.’
‘Why did you let him in?’
‘I thought he was my boyfriend.’
Dianne Talbot raised one skinny eyebrow. Duval’s henchwoman was lean, hard and tanned as a stick of beef jerky. Her eyeliner was steel blue, her lipstick a translucent shade of plum, and she wore a navy pantsuit.
Sitting next to her was a man in a white shirt and blue-striped tie who I assumed to be her second in command. His name tag identified him as Detective Jefferson Archer, and he looked to be in his mid to late thirties. He had nice features and would have been cute as a twenty-something, but hadn’t aged well. His dwindling brown hair had been shorn into a number one, a slight paunch jutted over his trousers, and the beginnings of jowls were melting away his jawline. He hadn’t said much, mainly looked at me with hostile little eyes.
‘And your boyfriend is Detective Senior Constable Sean Shields, is that correct?’ Talbot continued, her voice a husky rasp.
‘You know that, Dianne.’
‘It’s Detective Senior Sergeant Talbot.’
We sat there for a long while, maybe a minute. Talbot made notes. Archer stared at me and clicked his pen.
There was something I’d been meaning to ask.
‘How did you know Nick was at my place? Were you following him?’
Talbot and Archer exchanged a look. Talbot dipped her sharp chin at him and he stopped clicking his pen and leaned forward, elbows on the table.
‘You were under surveillance. Detective Sergeant Talbot thought Austin would try to contact you sooner or later, and she was right,’ he said.
A creepy feeling filtered through me and I felt a little nauseous. Someone had been watching me for six weeks? Someone had been watching and I hadn’t known? My only comfort was that I hadn’t left the house all that much and I’d generally kept the bedroom blinds drawn. Suddenly paranoid, I wondered if I’d done a lot of unconscious nose picking and arse scratching. I hoped there hadn’t been much to see.
Talbot slapped her folder shut. It was bulging with statements, witness reports and photographs and it had my name on the front.
‘Right. You’re free to go,’ she said.
We all stood up. Archer said, ‘You want me to escort her to the lobby?’
‘No, I’ll do it.’
Archer raised his eyebrows. As I got up I felt indentations in the back of my thighs where the vinyl chair had pinched the flesh. I was still wearing my denim skirt, but the Tactical Response Group had been nice enough to give me a clean t-shirt, and allowed me to remove my stripper heels and slip a pair of sneakers onto my feet.
Talbot led me down a corridor and into a lift. She inserted a card and we began to descend.
‘How’s Nick?’ I asked.
‘In hospital.’
I was getting a little sick of her surly attitude and decided to plead my case one more time.
‘Look, Detective Talbot, I’ve been telling you the truth. I’ll take a lie detector test if you want. Austin approached me and asked to follow me around for a book he was writing. I went to his house that day to pick him up for a ride-along and found the body. I didn’t hear anything more from him until tonight. I’m guessing you had my phones bugged so you’d know, right? I was as shocked as anyone when he showed up. That’s it. I’ve got nothing to do with any of this. I’m just innocently caught in the middle.’
I’d hoped the mild-mannered appeal to her better nature might work but when the lift reached the ground floor she hit the door-close button and got in my face. Her eyes were narrowed and up close she smelled of slightly astringent White Linen perfume, as well as the coffee and cigarettes I’d noticed on our first meeting.
‘You think I’m unaware of all the shit you’ve been involved with over the past two years? You think I buy that you’re just an innocent girl caught in the middle? That line might work with Christakos and Shields, but it doesn’t run with me. Ever since the service knocked you back you’ve been insinuating yourself into all the police business you can. I don’t know if you’re one of those crazy law enforcement fans or a cop-fucker. Probably both. So I’m only going to tell you once. Stay the hell away from my investigation.’ She stared at me, hard.
I couldn’t believe the naked hatred on her face. I felt pressure behind my eyeballs, like blood had welled up in the sockets, and the muscles in my forearms twitched as I instinctively prepared to reach up and push her back into the elevator doors. But before I gave in to the impulse I noticed the corner of her mouth twitch and a triumphant glimmer in her eye.
She wanted me to go her. There’d be a camera in the elevator, they’d bust me for assaulting a police officer and I’d never get my licence back. I balled my fists and dug my fingernails into the skin of my palms instead, forcing a smile.
‘Stay away? Gladly, ma’am.’ I actually saluted her and she pursed her mouth, clearly disappointed I hadn’t done anything. She didn’t say a word as she let me out into the police centre lobby. Sean was waiting. She waved and nodded at him and he smiled back. Whatever. I ran over and hugged him.
‘I’m sorry about tonight.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
Over his shoulder I saw Talbot give me one last, dirty look.
chapter thirteen
My flat was still a crime scene so the police had booked Sean and me into a four star hotel on St Kilda Road. On the second day after the shooting, Chloe came to visit and we lay out by the blue-tiled rooftop pool under a sky bleached pale by the intense noonday sun. I was slathered in SPF 15, while Chloe glistened with Hawaiian Tropic tanning oil. She smelled like a piña colada and I wondered where the hell she’d got hold of the stuff. Surely the Cancer Council had outlawed it years ago.
When she’d first arrived I’d told her all about Christmas night and was a little miffed when she wasn’t overly excited about the SWAT team taking down a homicidal crime writer in my living room. Had we gone through so much
violence together that it now seemed routine? Or were the TV networks keeping the story on such high rotation that everyone was sick of it? Chloe seemed much more interested when I told her about the argument I’d had with Sean.
‘You kiss and make up?’ she asked, casually untying the back of her bikini top and flinging the microscopic scrap of elastane over the back of the moulded plastic sun lounge. She squirted more coconut oil directly onto her chest and began rubbing it in, seemingly oblivious to the glares the other guests were giving us from behind their sunglasses.
‘You’d better put that back on,’ I said.
‘Why?’
‘I think it’s illegal.’
‘That’s stupid. Men can go topless.’
‘They don’t have tits.’
‘I dunno, check out that fat bloke. He’s got a better rack than you.’
We squinted over our sunnies, and the middle-aged man who had been ogling Chloe’s breasts quickly turned away. She was right, he was at least a B cup.
‘You’d better get used to it, babe,’ I said. ‘Women’s boobs are so sexualised in our culture you’ll have people telling you off for breastfeeding in public.’
‘No they won’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Not gonna breastfeed.’
‘You serious?’
‘Makes your tits sag.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘It’s true. Besides, I don’t want some creature suckling at me like a piglet. It’s gross.’
‘Being grossed out is the least of your worries after shitting a watermelon.’
‘Not doing that either.’
‘You can hardly avoid it.’
‘I’m already booked in for a C section,’ she said, triumphantly lifting her can of Coke and taking a sip.
‘Chloe, that’s a major operation.’
‘Have you talked to the girls at my agency who’ve had kids? Well, I have and childbirth is seriously fucked up. There’s stretching, ripping, tearing’—with each word she stabbed a finger in the direction of her crotch—‘cutting, hacking, stitches . . .’
I winced and instinctively crossed my legs.
‘Chanel said they sliced her from arsehole to breakfast when she popped out the twins, and Juanita told me that after she had Jayden her moot looked and felt like a lump of raw meat the dog had chewed. No way, mate, I’m not putting my poor puss through that. She’s for fun and profit only. Aren’t you, babe?’ She addressed the last remark towards her vagina, like an heiress cooing to a rat-sized mutt.
It was bad timing for the nervous-looking pool boy, who had chosen that moment to come over and tell her to put her top back on. He stammered his way through his request, his eyes fixed on the lifesaving ring on the far wall. She didn’t argue with him, but she did get up and take about three minutes to comply, turning this way and that so everyone got a good look. One mother actually put her hand over her young son’s eyes.
‘Stop avoiding the issue,’ she said when she finally sat back down. ‘Did you make up or not?’
‘I guess so. I apologised and after that we didn’t really talk about it.’
‘He doesn’t want you to strip.’
‘That was about the gist of it.’ I swigged my bottle of water. I could have gone a proper drink, but lately I’d been trying to be good and hold out till five each day. Christmas Day excluded.
‘The guy’s serious then.’
‘You reckon?’
‘Shit yeah.’ She nodded sagely and lay back on her lounge. Kids were screaming and splashing in the pool, apparently recovered from Chloe’s display.
‘When you first start seeing a guy, they think the stripping thing’s pretty hot. But when they fall in love with you, they get jealous and want you all to themselves. Fair enough, when you think about it.’
‘Chloe!’
‘What?’
‘It is not fair enough, someone telling me what I can and can’t do with my own body. And that’s not all. By telling me I shouldn’t strip he’s implying that there’s something wrong with it and I’m, I dunno, immoral.’
I repeated his sarky remark about the ballet and Chloe cracked up. Annoying, since she was supposed to be on my side.
‘Don’t you wanna quit anyway? Isn’t that why you did your detective course in the first place?’
‘Well, yeah. I can’t do it forever. But that’s not the point. He shouldn’t be telling me what to do. I didn’t think he was that sort of person.’
‘Honey, they all are. Curtis was just the same. Hated me stripping. That’s why I try not to have any serious boyfriends. I mean, if he didn’t want me to do it he should have kept me in the style to which I’m accustomed—then I wouldn’t have had to work.’
I gave her a look over my sunglasses.
‘What?’ she said.
‘That’s very nineteen fifties of you.’
She shrugged. ‘So? I’d swap places with you any day, babe. Sean’s paying your rent, buying the food and the booze. Not only that, but he’s a fucking spunk, everyone likes him and that accent makes me cream my jeans every time I hear it. Sure, he’s a copper, but he doesn’t act like one and he doesn’t mind a smoke, which makes him okay in my books. Can’t trust a person who won’t have a choof every now and again.’
‘I don’t choof.’
‘Yeah, well, I put that down to you growing up on a marijuana plantation. Too much early exposure put you off for life. Point is, you don’t know how lucky you are. Plenty of chicks would kill to have a guy like Sean. Why don’t you just relax and enjoy lying around on your arse, for once?’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Feels weird, as though I owe him or something. I like having my own money.’
‘I like having someone else’s better!’ She laughed and drained her Coke, then looked around for the pool boy so she could order another. ‘Why the hell did I have to get knocked up by a broke journo? Why couldn’t it have been some rich dude?’
‘Maybe because you never fucked any.’
‘Oh yeah, that’d be it.’ She twisted in her chair. ‘Who’ve we gotta blow to get some pool service around here?’
I couldn’t see the pool guy either so I hoisted myself up and wandered over to the covered bar area, careful not to slip on the wet tiles. I had to suck in my stomach with a lot more force than usual and cursed all those indolent hours on the couch with Sean, drinking wine and eating cheese and crackers. One good thing about stripping was that it simultaneously provided cardiovascular exercise and a damn good reason to stick to a diet. I wondered if all the slothful evenings and indulgent snacks had actually been a ploy of his to fatten me up and keep me off the stage.
There was still no sign of the pool guy but I did see a menu mounted on a clear plastic stand, so I picked it up and looked it over. The usual hotel snacks: nachos, club sandwiches, potato wedges, chicken Caesar salad. I rang a small brass bell and leaned against the counter watching the television set that was bolted to the wall. Dr Phil was on, talking in his Fozzie Bear voice, telling a teary American woman that she couldn’t change what she didn’t acknowledge. I hadn’t seen any crap shows for ages, since Sean hated daytime television almost as much as he hated cheese singles. I knew that both were bad for you, but couldn’t resist their synthetic charms.
The good doctor threw to an ad break, but instead of a commercial for margarine or washing powder there was a news desk and a banner headline announcing a ‘breaking story’. When I heard what it was I dropped the menu.
chapter fourteen
‘Nick’s escaped!’ I told Chloe.
‘Wasn’t he half dead?’
‘Just a pretty bad flesh wound. He knocked out a police officer, apparently.’
‘Rock and roll.’ She yawned.
‘Fuck,’ I said.
‘It’s not your problem, mate. Cops’ll catch him eventually. More importantly, what about Sean, did you tell him you’d quit stripping?’
Luckil
y Chloe’s mobile started singing: Madonna, ‘Justify My Love’.
‘Chloe’s Elite Strippers, this is Chloe.’ She was silent for a moment, then: ‘I dunno, who’s calling? Oh hey. Yeah, I’ll put her on.’
I shook my head but she handed me the phone anyway.
‘Hello?’ I said.
‘Hi, Simone, it’s Elisabeth Austin. Liz. We met at the Summer Sessions?’
Nick’s sister. Christ, what was it now? Probably wanted to talk about her brother.
‘I remember. Hey, did you see the news about Nick escaping from hospital?’
‘Um, yes.’ She muttered something about it being an unfortunate situation and I got the feeling she really didn’t want to talk about it. Pretty cold, considering it was her twin on the run. ‘I’m actually calling about Curtis Malone’s book. There are a couple of things I need to go over with you from a legal standpoint.’
‘When?’
‘As soon as possible. Are you busy at the moment?’
I groaned inwardly. The last thing I wanted to do was read what he’d written about the Emery Wade case, but if I didn’t want Jimmy Olsen to slander me I was going to have to. I figured I may as well get it over with so I could race back and spend all afternoon by the pool.
‘No. I’m free. Where do you want to meet?’
‘Is St Kilda convenient for you? Our offices are based in Albert Park so it’s handy for me. It’s almost twelve, how about I buy you lunch?’
The thought cheered me somewhat. She probably had an expense account.
‘Sure. Where?’
‘Is upstairs at the Stokehouse alright?’
An expensive, two-hat restaurant on the beach. Was it ever. I livened up some more.
I left Chloe by the pool, changed into denim pedal pushers and a singlet top, and caught the number 16 tram down the wide, tree-lined boulevard that was St Kilda Road. After the junction the tram shunted right into Fitzroy Street, sliding past innumerable cafés, bars and restaurants. Just after it veered left on the Esplanade I jumped off and took the footbridge to the beachfront.
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